Great Australian Beer Yarns Read online

  After watching the program and taking note of the recipe, I went to buy the ingredients at my local supermarket. I collected all the necessary ingredients and placed them on the check-out counter. I then noticed that the person in front of me had the same kind of ingredients: flour, eggs, vegetable oil, tomatoes, baby spinach, Spanish onions and a deli parcel wrapped in white paper. Surely it wasn’t fish?

  It was uncanny, bizarre, and it couldn’t possibly have been the same recipe. That’s what I was telling myself anyway, hoping that no one else would notice.

  How embarrassing.

  I had a quick glance at the lady in front of me and just smiled. I don’t think she knew what was happening. I finally paid for my groceries and left the supermarket in a hurry.

  I was still missing one ingredient — the beer — so I entered the local bottle shop, grabbed a can from the fridge and went to the counter.

  Lo and behold, I saw the same lady with the same beer as was used on the television program. It was also the same as the one I had in my hand.

  My suspicions were confirmed.

  She was quite attractive and me being a bloke, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by. I started a conversation with her and found out that she also saw the TV program and yep, she was cooking for her parents that night.

  Somehow I managed to ask her out and eight months later we got married. Every year since, we have celebrated our anniversary with ‘Fish and chips with a twist’.

  BEER AND SKITTLES

  Chris Dwyer

  I would like to pass on a story that makes me laugh whenever I rekindle thoughts of that silly Sunday years ago.

  It was out in the central west of New South Wales and a few of us locals called into the Royal Hotel on a quiet Sunday afternoon. There were only about eight of us in the pub and we all settled back for a bit of a drink.

  Later in the evening, with more than enough schooners aboard, a water cum beer fight erupted in the bar. The publican at the time, Frank W, couldn’t keep out of a good fight so he hooked a hose to one of the beer lines and proceeded to spray down anyone who moved. Before you knew it we were sliding around in four inches of beer and water on the old lino floor.

  The game we invented that day involved sliding along the length of the bar on your stomach with a bike helmet attached and hitting five ‘skittles’ with your head, the ‘skittles’ being two kegs placed on top of another three kegs.

  Surprisingly, no one was hurt, but a few headaches were around the next day.

  We found out later that Frank had to dispose of this lake of beer from his floor before his wife arose the next day.

  We always thought Frank was a bit of a genius — he just drilled holes in the floor and drained the beer into the cellar.

  BEER DRENCH

  Penny Turner

  A beer memory that springs to mind happened at one of our teenage parties held at home near Coonabarabran in the late 1960s. My father was a real wag as well as a good beer drinker, and was always thinking up tricks to play on us and our friends.

  After an afternoon of playing tennis, eating and drinking, Dad appeared with a drench pack (a backpack normally filled with drench for sheep, cows, etc., that you squirted into the animal’s mouth with a drench gun) on his back, full of beer. He proceeded to go around and drench our friends — if you wouldn’t have the offered ‘drench’ orally, you ended up being squirted with beer.

  Dad thought it was a huge joke, until the next morning when we got him with stale beer with the drench gun as he was waking up. Mum was not amused!

  BLACK DAYS

  Barry Williams

  As a nipper (I was only sixteen) on the railways I used to go to the local pub — in fact the only pub — in the small town of Einasleigh in North Queensland with my two carpenter mates for a couple of beers while the camp oven stew was cooking. Our camp was only 200 yards out the back door of the pub by the railway siding.

  On occasions there were Aboriginal stockmen or ringers out the back of the pub waiting for a ride back to the cattle station. This was back in the 1950s and publicans weren’t allowed to sell beer or spirits to Aborigines, but some publicans would serve them drip tray beer — this was the stuff that spilt in the pour and was caught in the tray. The law soon cracked down on that and made sure the outback pubs put Condy’s crystals in the drip tray and only sold beer in clear bottles. The rules were meant to put an end to the practice.

  So this day Jimmy Carpentaria, an Aboriginal stockman from Carpentaria Station (they always took the name of the station as their surnames) asked me if I would bring out a bottle of 6d beer.

  ‘Don’t get the brown stuff,’ he said. ‘It tastes awful. Get me the purple beer. Better taste.’

  BOGANS AND BEER

  John Bogan

  As you can see, my name is John Bogan. That’s right, John BOGAN!

  Growing up in the 1980s with this name was bad enough with the Kylie Mole skits in The Comedy Company. Now I hear ‘bogan’ has become an official word in the Oxford English Dictionary, defined as a ‘depreciative term for an unfashionable, uncouth, or unsophisticated person, especially of low social status’.

  Look, I am happy to cop the ‘unfashionable’ and maybe even the ‘uncouth’ in that definition, but when it comes to beer, my brother and I (no, his name isn’t Dazza) would like to think we are fairly sophisticated. We travelled the US together tasting craft beers, and my own beer adventures since then have lead me to find a career in the craft brewing industry (no watery lagers for this bogan!).

  So when we discovered a new craft beer from Tassie we wanted to try, I gave the brewery a call and left a message about having some sent to me. When they called me back, I could hear laughter in the background, like I was on speakerphone to the whole brewery, and the bloke talking to me was trying to stifle his own laugh while he asked for my name. Then, once I said my name, all he asked me was did I want a free shirt from the brewery.

  Thinking these Tassie folk were a bit looney and starting to wonder if this beer they brewed even existed, it all made sense when he mentioned the brewery’s slogan …

  ‘Not suitable for bogans.’

  … Safe to say, since then I have become an unofficial mascot for the brewery, and the beer we ordered from them is definitely suitable for these bogans!

  BORN IN A PUB

  Kevin Hole

  The following is true as far as I have been informed; I personally cannot remember.

  I was born on the 15th of April 1933 at the Mount Lachlan Hotel, corner of Elizabeth and Raglan Streets, Waterloo, Sydney.

  Washed and clothed, my proud father, Jim, presented me to the local clientele from behind the bar.

  As the tale goes, one inebriated gentleman promptly placed his forefinger in his glass of beer and then into my mouth.

  Thus my first taste of beer, less than one hour old.

  Furthermore, I still enjoy it!

  CAR WENT THE OLD WAY HOME

  Peter Lalor

  There’s an old Sunday newspaper editor who, like many in his trade, was fond of keeping the ink in his blood balanced with booze. Now Fozzie, as we’ll call him, was prone to all-night sessions and tended to get rather muddled.

  One night he headed home before sunrise and was obviously sober enough to find his car. (These were the days when that was proof enough of your ability to drive.)

  Anyway, Fozzie got home safely enough, parked the car in the driveway, somehow made his way inside and upstairs to bed beside his dearly beloved and promptly began to snore away like he hadn’t a trouble in the world.

  At least, that’s the way he tells it.

  Early next morning he rolled over, almost killing his wife with his beery breath, opened one bloodshot eye and thought, ‘Hang on a minute … something’s not right here.’

  Poor Fozzie had woken up next to his first wife and somewhere in an adjacent suburb the second one was waiting in a very cranky mood.

  ‘Bloody car went the old way home,’ he t
old us later.

  We believed him, but we’re not sure if wife number two did.

  COUNTING SHEEP

  Chris Horneman

  There’s a story in our family about Dad not being able to sleep. He would lie there at night, tossing and turning. Mum suggested counting sheep, but that didn’t work. In frustration she said, ‘If you can’t sleep and you can’t count sheep try counting glasses of beer; that should come naturally to you.’

  A few seconds passed and Dad got out of bed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Mum.

  ‘To get my first beer,’ said Dad.

  CROCKET

  Peter Stehr

  Crocket was the town character and regular at the Pioneer Hotel in the one-pub town of Boomi, northwest New South Wales.

  It was noon on a November day in 1965 and a howling drought was in progress when a commercial traveller pulled up outside the hotel. He shook the dust off him and walked into the public bar where Crocket was sitting on a bar stool in the corner of the room.

  The barmaid had just gone to the ladies room and the traveller waited impatiently for service, banging a two-shilling coin on the counter.

  After a short while he turned to Crocket and said, ‘How long has this town been dead for, mate?’

  Crocket replied, ‘Not long, mate; you’re the first vulture to arrive.’

  CURLY

  Carole Smith

  When I was a teenager in the 1960s, it was the ‘in’ thing to set our hair in rollers using beer as a setting agent. Amazingly, it worked. Our curls lasted all day.

  Pity about the smell.

  DRINK RIDER

  Neil Chippendale

  I belong to an organisation that recreates the battles of the English Civil Wars of 1642–1660. At one of the weekends in St Albans the founder of the organisation, the Brigadier, was riding his horse from pub to pub in full seventeenth-century battle gear and accepting drinks from members. After about two hours of this he was approached by the police and told to dismount, as he was drunk.

  After about fifteen minutes he mounted up and rode off to the pubs again. A police car pulled up and the police arrested the ‘Brig’ and charged him with being drunk in charge of a horse. At court he was convicted and fined.

  ERNIE

  Peter Lalor

  The Lord Newry regulars (see ‘Banned from the Woodyard’, p. 18) certainly had some history about them. One was an old bloke called Ernie, who by the time I got to know him looked like Billy McMahon’s grandfather. Ernie was in his nineties and had big eyes and two enormous ears which must have continued to grow after the rest of him had started to shrink.

  Ernie was so old he’d been a hansom cab driver in Brunswick Street as a lad.

  Ernie loved a beer and would pop in most days as the Newry was early on his list of chores for the day.

  Ernie was a busy man who knew almost everyone in Fitzroy and North Fitzroy and was always keen to catch up with every one of them at their individual pubs.

  One day he was particularly downbeat when he dropped in for his first beer and told me that his best mate up at one of the other pubs had passed away, which left a bit of a hole in Ernie’s routine. But, not for long.

  When the bloke’s will was read the relatives were horrified to find he had left an undisclosed sum in the care of the publican of his favourite pub and it was to be used to buy Ernie his beer every day.

  Ernie was delighted and would check in each day and enjoy a shout from a dead mate.

  FALSE TEETH

  Garry Phipps

  Old Mick had been drinking at his local pub for as long as anyone could remember and this day a young bloke came in and noticed that every time old Mick went to the toilet he would leave his false teeth in his beer.

  Curiosity got the better of the young bloke so over he went and asked why.

  Old Mick replied, ‘I went to the toilet once and when I came back half me beer was missing, so in go the teeth and for some reason it doesn’t happen any more.’

  FLY IN BEER

  Mrs E Shelley

  In the good old days, around the early 1950s, I was living in Young, New South Wales. My late husband grew up in the area, but I had lived in Sydney all my life before moving there. We had two young children and not much money and I decided to earn a bit of extra cash one Sunday by cherry picking.

  Leaving the two kids behind with a relative we set sail for the orchard which had advertised for cherry pickers. It was hard work for a city girl like me, but I was enjoying it.

  About 10 a.m. the orchard owner’s wife came out with freshly made scones and cakes and large pots of tea for our morning tea break.

  One old-timer, a typical Aussie, got his tea and a fly fell into it.

  ‘I’ll have to throw that one out,’ he said. ‘You never know what germs they carry.’

  Later that afternoon the same kind lady came out with some beer for all who wanted it and you would not believe it — the same old-timer got his beer, put it on the bench for a minute and a fly fell into it.

  He got it out with his dirty finger and said, ‘You can’t waste a good beer,’ and promptly drank it.

  This is a true story and I’ve never been able to work out how he could not drink his tea, but the beer was okay.

  HEAD BANGER

  Paul Cairns

  I was enjoying my second pint of Canberra Pride with the then Master Brewer for the Wig & Pen pub, Richard Pass. Richard was explaining the palate qualities of a higher temperature, slightly hopped, slightly malty ale and, being dedicated to the enjoyment of all things brown, dark brown and black, I was into it.

  In keeping with this tour and with my palate being challenged at every mouthful, Richard suggested a change to an effervescent cold Kiandra Gold.

  This was really hitting the spot, and two of these — followed by explanations and tasting of the wonderful Ballyragget Red — had me slightly infected but raring to go.

  Richard’s next choice, the intriguingly named but superb tasting Aviator Bock, had me asking for detailed recipes and further explanation regarding its naming. I must confess that by now Richard was slightly infected himself.

  With some mirth he announced the following: ‘Bock is a high alcohol content dark beer enjoyed by German landowners and the like and one should look out for one’s self when consuming more than the one or two. In fact, true to its name, “Bock” is the last thing you will hear as your head hits the tiles on the pub floor!’

  So endeth the tour and the lesson.

  HORSE-PITELL-ITY

  Lloyd O’Brien

  Many years ago on the kind of stinking hot evening that only Sydney can turn on, I took a visiting Scottish friend down to the Quay for a ferry ride.

  Sydney left him speechless.

  ‘What,’ I asked cockily, ‘is it that you particularly like about our city?’

  ‘Och aye, it’s yer horse-pitell-ity, no doubt abert-it.’

  We had moved to a seat close to the berthing ferry when I noticed someone had left a brown paper bag there. In it were two very cold, very large bottles of beer.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, not missing a beat and reaching for the trusty bottle opener I carried back then. ‘It even extends to this arrangement for leaving a couple of coldies around the traps for parched blow-ins from Scotland.’

  Glug-glug-glug … we each took a few healthy swigs.

  I smiled at him confidentially. ‘You’re lucky, you know, mate; you’re drinking a Reschs Dirty Annie.’

  He frowned a little, then quickly put the bottle to his mouth and drained it.

  ‘Aye, it’s yer horse-pitell-ity!’ was all he could say.

  HOW’S ABOUT A KISS?

  James Hamilton

  As an avid armchair gardener, his nose attracted me at once. In my time I have judged Italian tomatoes and early lettuce and was once co-opted onto a sub-committee to discuss the merits of a particularly fine King Edward potato. His nose, had it been in a different position, could well have
won a prize in the red onion section of the local horticultural show.

  After that, the rest of his face was something of a disappointment. There were hints of glorious purple in the broken veins that littered his cheeks like motorway intersections and the puce of his ears matched a popular shade of lipstick in an economy range. But the foundation was a common, agricultural ruddiness that can only have come from life out-of-doors.

  I rather pride myself on my complexion. I inherited it from my mother. When she died at eighty-three after a blameless life led entirely without recourse to artificial face creams, the undertaker in an undertone remarked that she had one of the finest skins he had seen during forty years in the trade.

  Recollected gems like that can enrich many a winter morning. I admit that I do use ‘Bliss’ just to keep the wrinkles at bay; I believe I owe it to my friends. Of course, one’s diet is so important, too. Rich foods I avoid like the plague and alcohol I take only in moderation.

  However, that particular evening was an exception. I really could have killed for a glass of beer. I had just spent a frightful four hours driving in pouring rain on an outback track that more closely resembled the Limpopo River mudflats than a vehicular thoroughfare. Only the absence of hippopotami persuaded me that I was still in Australia.

  I found the hotel quite by chance; in the gathering dusk its welcoming lights presaged a life-saving oasis. It stood in splendid isolation as a memorial to a short-lived copper-mining boom in the 1890s and it was clear that precious little had been spent on it since.